it s you have to. it s you have to. i just have to respect his position and support him and be the bigger person in this situation and being the bigger person as the bigger brother, and i have to understand and respect the fact that he loves what he s doing. i mean as he indicated to me earlier. he said hey, i didn t do anything wrong. why should i have to leave? i need to stop what he s doing and hope that he s able to seek justice in his own way and deal with it the best way that he can. now, just a time line here michael. 2011 family filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the officers and the little rock police department alleging that mr. ellison s civil rights were violated. it was ruled in 2013 that the two officers involved would stand trial. now november 2014 where there was a decision made here and that you are appealing, correct?
to have to enter an apartment without a warrant. the way mr. ellison s apartment was entered without a warrant and without an emergency basis to do so. this is not abstract constitutional academic type of, you know gotcha games here. these are fundamental core concepts that govern our society and my involvement in this case has shown that this particular department has officers that are woefully and poorly trained in these really again, core concepts. yeah. well, we want to point out, again, the police department did not comment because they do not as a policy comment on litigation but thank you both for joining us. spencer, again our thoughts are with you and your family and michael, thank you very much for your time and we ll continue to follow any developments thon story as well. thank you, tamron. new word from the clinton foundation about millions of dollars in donations including one that violated the obama administration s ethics rules and controversy surrounds the
what do you want to get for the ellison family? justice and closure. let me say one thing about that. you know have you here two victims or the victims of mr. ellison, you know, the sons of mr. ellison. these guys spend a lifetime devoted to law enforcement in some way or another, and what this shows you and the length of time that it takes for a resolution here shows you is how embedded this system is in terms of staving off these civil rights lawsuits. when two guys like this can t seek justice, i think it s a pretty bad indictment on the system and on what we all as lay people and non-officers can expect. you know i deposed the shooter in this case and i asked her point blank to define for me probable cause and she couldn t give me a definition of probable cause. this is i believe at the time a 15 or 16-year veteran. mm-hmm. you know, tamron that s a problem because probable cause is what a reasonable officer has
it s an extremely high standard as you know. what we have under way right now is a pattern and practice investigation request pursuant to section 14141 of the code and what we re alleging is that mr. ellison s shooting while, you know sadly tragic and avoidable, was really part of a bigger pattern within that department and i can personally attest to reviewing files upon files of various police-involved shooting which reflect a really troublesome pattern that really stems right back to the practice of the internal investigation. you say troublesome pattern. there are numbers of the police-involved shootings at that department, 73% of them involved african-americans, is that the case? that is i believe the number right now, which is which is obviously disproportionate to the african-american population of the city. you know one of the things that we are trying to do with this lawsuit and with our request to
but you can help change that with a simple choice. drink more water. filtered by brita. and introducing our new advanced filter, now better than ever. this week the justice department announced it would not be pursuing civil rights charges against george zimmerman in the death of trayvon, but there s another case that the justice department is also investigating involving the shooting of an unarmed man. on the night of december 9 2010 67-year-old eugene ellison was killed by an off-duty police officer inside his apartment in little rock arkansas. he was holding a cane at the time. now, according to court documents, the officers involved donna lesher and tabitha m mccrillis were moonlighting as